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This study describes the construction of a lab-built Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) system for gas sensing applications employing a highly sensitive and trustworthy optical approach. The nanocomposite thin film of tin oxide (SnO2) and Polypyrrole (PPy) were prepared for sensing highly toxic gas, i.e., ammonia (NH3) gas. The gas sensor was validated by both optical and conductometric techniques of gas sensing. The optical SPR gas sensor is based on the change in refractive index at the SnO2/Polypyrrole (PPy) interface with gas adsorption (NH3). The thickness of SnO2 and Polypyrrole thin films was optimised using theoretical calculations for a sharp SPR reflectance curve. The manuscript also offers theoretical SPR curves for different PPy and SnO2 layer thicknesses. To support the theoretical conclusions, the effects of NH3 gas on the prism/Au/SnO2/Polypyrrole system were also investigated experimentally. In comparison to other research described in the literature, it was observed that the constructed sensor's sensitivity was higher. The obtained results demonstrate the utility of the SPR setup in the investigation of the interactions of adhered gas molecules with dielectrics and gas sensing. For conductometric gas sensing studies, the film having optimised thicknesses for sharp SPR reflectance curves was separately prepared on Interdigitated Electrodes. At a low working temperature of roughly 150 °C, the sensing response of the constructed film was observed and found to be maximal (60). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique is an easy and reliable method for detecting very low concentration of toxic gases at room temperature using a gas sensitive thin film layer. In the present work, a room temperature operated NH3 gas sensor has been developed using a laboratory assembled SPR measurement setup utilising a p-polarized He-Ne laser and prism coupling technique. A semiconducting gas sensitive tin oxide (SnO2) layer has been deposited under varying growth conditions (i.e., by varying deposition pressure) over the gold coated prism (BK-7) to excite the surface plasmon modes in Kretschmann configuration. The SPR reflectance curves for prism/Au/SnO2/air system for SnO2 thin films prepared at different sputtering pressure were measured, and the SnO2 film deposited at 10mT pressure is found to exhibit a sharp SPR reflectance curve with minimum reflectance (0.32) at the resonance angle of 44.7° which is further used for sensing NH3 gas of different concentration at room temperature. The SPR reflectance curve shows a significant shift in resonance angle from 45.05° to 58.55° on interacting with NH3. The prepared sensor is found to give high sensing response (0.11) with high selectivity towards very low concentration of NH3 (0.5 ppm) and quick response time at room temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Present study focuses on determination of complex dielectric constant of biomolecules as function of frequency by means of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique without losing their biofunctionality. Surface plasmon modes have been excited in Kretschmann configuration at interface of ZnO-Au thin films. Various biomolecules (glucose oxidase, cholesterol oxidase, urease, and uricase) have been immobilized successfully on surface of ZnO thin film by electrostatic interaction. SPR reflectance curves for all biomolecules were recorded separately at different wavelengths (407-635 nm). Complex dielectric constant was determined by fitting the experimental SPR data with Fresnel's equations. Dielectric constant of all biomolecules shows frequency dispersion and attributed to ionic polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenously assembled surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique has been exploited to study the thickness dependent dielectric properties of WO3 thin films. WO3 thin films (80 nm to 200 nm) have been deposited onto gold (Au) coated glass prism by sputtering technique. The structural, optical properties and surface morphology of the deposited WO3 thin films were studied using X-ray diffraction, UV-visible spectrophotometer, Raman spectroscopy, and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). XRD analysis shows that all the deposited WO3 thin films are exhibiting preferred (020) orientation and Raman data indicates that the films possess single phase monoclinic structure. SEM images reveal the variation in grain size with increase in thickness. The SPR reflectance curves of the WO3/Au/prism structure were utilized to estimate the dielectric properties of WO3 thin films at optical frequency (λ=633 nm). As the thickness of WO3 thin film increases from 80 nm to 200 nm, the dielectric constant is seen to be decreasing from 5.76 to 3.42, while the dielectric loss reduces from 0.098 to 0.01. The estimated value of refractive index of WO3 film is in agreement to that obtained from UV-visible spectroscopy studies. The strong dispersion in refractive index is observed with wavelength of incident laser light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]